Christmases Past & Present
by starboarder
Summary: Jane's introspections on two very different Christmases.
1. Christmas Past

Christmas at Moor House that December was the very picture of good cheer. The bustle in the house, the long-awaited homecoming of Diana and Mary, and the additional joy of family – a joy that was, for the first time, hers – made that Christmas the first in the long chain of Christmases past in which she truly felt in her heart some of the spirit that the holiday was meant to usher in. And yet – in spite of the gleaming house, the new furnishings, the companionship of her family, the happy warmth within and the desolate waste of snowy moor without – there was something that gnawed at her, something that intruded with an announcing pang every time she chanced to forget it. It sat, cold and aching in that place in her heart which it inhabited, and, like a sudden Spring frost will nip new flowers in the bud, it snuffed every tiny hope she had of reviving, of moving onward, of tasting happiness once more. When she retired to bed on Christmas night, it was not to lie reflecting on the events of the day – her cousins' arrival, the spirit of love and togetherness that had presided at the table, the blissful evening spent by the fireside in conversation with minds that could both appreciate and instruct hers – but to follow, tugged by forces impossible to resist, a quite different subject. Somewhere, perhaps in some far corner of Europe, _he_ was retiring to bed, laying himself down as she was doing. Was he lying awake and thinking of her? Was he, like she, gazing into the dark and seeing, not blankness, but a beloved face gazing back at him? Was he even now pressing to his heart hands that had once clasped hers, as if to hold back the sorrow that threatened to rush forth at any moment and overwhelm him?

Lying alone, in the eerie half-light that filled her room – a reflection of the snow without – the specter of endless Christmases yet to come rose up bleak and terrible before her. Next year, would she do as she had done now? Closing the door of her chamber upon the warmth still emanating from the parlor below, upon the holly and evergreen-festooned hallways, whose bright berries and shining leaves struck her as gaudy and garish, would she, with slow, weary steps, shrug out of her festive attire, pull on her nightdress, and stand at the window to stare out at the vast snow-covered moorland? And would she then see, not the blanketed, wintering heath, but something quite different: a narrow, ice-covered lane, a fallen horse, and before her – almost at her feet – a man rising from the ground, stumbling, lifting his piercing eyes to hers, pressing her small frame to his, accepting her assistance?

And what of the next year? And the next? And what of all the days upon days in between? What of the winter that was encroaching upon _her_, creeping in too soon, leaving dust in place of blooms, emptiness in place of fulfillment? She, who had so nearly grasped it: that fleeting, high-summer of bliss; where would _she_ be ten years hence? Would the hollowed-out shell of her heart be enough to sustain her? Would she have the strength still to resist the call of the wild wind, the frozen, smothered earth that, this night, spoke more deeply, more urgently to her than the warmth and life within?

Home, family, even wealth: a year since, if offered to her, she would have clung to them with a tenacious embrace and never slackened her hold. But now…

Midnight fell over Yorkshire. In a cottage on the moor outside the tiny village of Morton, the last embers of Christmas Eve fires glowed and went out. In the upstairs corner room, a solitary white-clad form knelt by her bed, head bowed as if in prayer. But in that peaceful scene, on that night when her heart should have been singing with thanksgiving, it wept, and the anguished, desperate words of a soul strained with longing for another broke from her lips, no more than a whisper in the silent house:

_Oh, my Darling! If only. If only._


	2. Christmas Present

Ferndean, Christmas 1851:

Adam is 7, Helen is 3

Jane is 29

It is twilight when Jane looks through the window to see that the snow has not yet ceased to fall, though this is already the third day and the landscape round the house is nigh unrecognizable in its white covering. It is well that her cousins insisted upon arriving early this year to assist with the preparations, for they would have found the roads impassible had they delayed a day longer. Adele, finished this year with school and grown into a well-turned-out beauty of eighteen, arrived only one day previous to Diana and Mary, returning from a stay with a school friend just hours before the storm began. It will be Adele's first Christmas as part of the household, though her ninth spent at Ferndean.

The snow, though it falls heavy and blows wildly, though it has them all kept prisoner  
indoors, neither troubles nor depresses Jane. A part of her revels in the view of the  
flying flakes hurrying past the window, in the moaning of the wind and the beating of  
the naked trees in the wood. Though she stands regarding this wild prospect separated from it only by a thin-paned window notorious for drafts, her heart is glad, her face still  
flushed and warm from hours spent in the kitchen with preparations. John's wife has outdone herself this year in preparing for them a Christmas feast fit to grace a king's table, and Jane, Mary, Diana and Adele have baked, polished, scrubbed, mended, dusted, and hung so many garlands as to nearly transform the modest drawing room into a wood-fairy's bower. But best of all is the new decoration that occupies a place of honor in the center of the room: a Christmas tree, made popular by the same crowning decoration that graced Windsor the previous Christmas, modeled after the German traditions of Prince Albert.

The tree at Ferndean has already been the subject of much excitement and adoring attention and endless gossip on the part of Adam who, upon learning that not only was the tree to be lit with candles, but also hung with colorful sweets and glass balls, galloped gleefully about the house, tormenting anyone who would listen with questions about when and how the decorating would proceed until Adele took him up to the nursery and sat him down with Helen to read quietly for a while.

Now they have all retired to their chambers for some rest after the bustle and excitement of the day, and to change their clothes and prepare for the evening's festivities. In the corner of the master bedchamber partitioned off for her boudoir hangs the gown she is to wear this evening: a piece of extravagance on her part, but one that was pronounced so becoming to her by Adele, and so wholeheartedly approved of by her husband, that she relented. The gown is indeed beautiful – a fine cream silk with broad stripes of pale lavender – the closest to grey that Edward would allow. It is simply pieced together, but elegant enough to require little in the way of extra ornament – she will wear with it only her pearl necklace.

She knows she must not tarry too long, but she dresses slowly, slipping the gown over her head and relishing the calm coolness of the air against her skin after the heat and flurry of activity downstairs. Every few moments she stops to look out at the storm, mesmerized – not altogether willingly – by the driving snow into a sort of trance. Time loses its hold, the years fall aside like drawn curtain.

Christmas has not always been a time of joy. As a child, it was yet another occasion by which to measure her inferiority to the Reeds – as Georgiana and Eliza were dressed by Bessie in their finest white muslin frocks, their hair curled and adorned with ribbons and flowers, she stood mutely watching, in some out of the way corner where, if she was lucky, she would be ignored and thereby, able to escape harassment. She never received presents from the Reeds, though on one Christmas, when she was quite young, Georgiana received a beautiful new doll and subsequently thought the worse of her old one which was deemed too shabby. Jane hazarded a request to care for it, and Georgiana replied that, as it was as homely-looking as she, she might have it.

Christmases at Lowood were grim, bleak affairs. The church sermons were twice the length of a normal one (and hence twice as unbearable), the Christmas table so meager, and the Christmas hymns around the niggardly fire afterward so feeble and lacking in heartfelt enthusiasm that the term "holiday" was scarcely creditable.

It is strange to her that she cannot remember her first Christmas _after_ Lowood – the only Christmas she spent at Thornfield Hall. It was, no doubt, a quiet affair, probably passed peacefully in the parlor with Mrs. Fairfax and Adele. There had most likely been some commonplace chatter, and perhaps she had indulged Adele for the holiday and permitted her to dance and sing for them. There would have been a fine, if modest, dinner, very little in the way of decorations, and certainly no gifts. The day would have passed with little ceremony and much calm. Thornfield had been without its master that day, for this was in the time before she knew him, and in his absence the house was as still as the frosted countryside around it.

In those days she would have cared little for the holiday, preoccupied as she was with the ideas, fancies and desires of a young and inexperienced mind on the verge of… _something_.

She reflects, with a little of the nostalgia that inevitably couples with waning youth, upon this restlessness in her younger days, of the draw within her of distant shores, of wild and strange countries never yet reached even in imagination. She remembers the feeling – not ambition, but something akin to destiny – of something great awaiting in the world that she felt desperately should be hers. She herself was not great or noble – she was small, easily overlooked, with only meager talent of expressing herself eloquently or charismatically – yet she believed she thought and felt as deeply – perhaps even more so – than other people. That she had within her something that made her drive for a larger life, a larger world, stronger than circumstances or means would allow her to realize. Then, on a cold January evening, a twist of fate had placed a catalyst in her path. Torment, joy and grief had followed in quick succession. Then a flight, an inheritance, an offer of marriage that placed greatness in her path once more: the chance to work as a missionary for the betterment of humankind and for the glory of God. At last, all she had striven for lay within her reach… yet her heart rebelled. And amidst the rebellion: whispers, visions, voices – _his_ voice. Her true destiny was not to be a life of such greatness or such brevity, such glory or such toil, yet what it held for her was, in her eyes, every bit as worthy of a lifelong devotion. A fulfillment of every hope, a securement of every aim, and he had called it, on that day so many years ago, a sacrifice.

He had been right, but not in the way he imagined. On that day she had given up many things: visions of a life lived alone, of passing each year in stillness and cold. She had sacrificed a life of endless speculation and wondering: _if only_. If only things had gone differently, if he had never disclosed the truth, if she had never fled from him. If only he had not betrayed her trust, if only she had not been so naïve, so blindly trusting. If only an event of 15 years past had never occurred. If only her heart had not been so willful, so unwilling to be guided by reason, so hopelessly _his_.

Yes, she had made the greatest sacrifice of her life – she gave up a life of could-have-been's – a life that would have been ruled by other people's expectations and hopes – and took full into her arms the life that would be. The life that that was. The life that is – that she is living right now.

And did not sacrifice go hand in hand with redemption? And was not her forgiveness the catalyst for his redemption, as his love had been the catalyst that allowed her to grasp what she had struggled toward for so long? What could be more fulfilling than to know that one had been the means of making another person whole again? Ambition, enterprise, glory: they could not help but shrink beside the quiet greatness of human love.

She has seen distant countries, has moved through cities astir with ideas and activities all new to her. She knows she will likely see more. Yet on this night she is content – joyful to her heart's core – with the confines of the present. She feels, were she never to stir again from this place and this time, she would not lament it. Her home is cleaned, polished to a shine and decorated to suit the season. Through the rooms waft the scents of meats, puddings, pies, savories and spices. Fires crackle brightly in the kitchen, the parlor, the bedchambers. She is surrounded by her family, by those she loves best on this earth. And as the evening descends in full upon the snowy wood outside, Edward and she will descend to the glowing rooms below. They will gather with Diana and Gordon, with Mary, Samuel and little Esther, with Adele, Adam and Helen, to partake of the Christmas table, piled high with the best of the season. Afterwards, the merry party will retire to the parlor where together they will pass around amongst them a single taper, lighting each of the candles on the Christmas tree. Then will come the exchange of gifts, some Christmas hymns around the piano – she will play, Edward and the others will sing – Adele will humor the children and dance a caper or two with them. There will be much laughter, much happy chatter, much warmth. The candles will burn low, the children will grow drowsy – Helen will crawl into to her father's lap, Adam to Adele's, Esther to Mary's.

It will not be as other Christmases have been, nor will it resemble absolutely all the Christmases yet to come. But those that have passed are past, and those yet to come seem lifetimes away, as distant and dreamlike as this present would have seemed to her in her restless years long ago.

She is adjusting the short, lace-edged sleeves of her frock in front of the mirror and smoothing the skirts when he steps into view behind her. He also is dressed in his evening best - black dinner jacket, black trousers, crisp white shirt, cream-colored waistcoat, black shoes polished to a shine. He is holding his neckcloth - a strip of fine white silk - at his side.

He stands, surveys her finely attired form – squinting, determined to miss no detail – and finally announces, "Darling, you're the very picture of a Christmas angel."

"You know better than to say such things," she reprimands, but she is smiling nonetheless. She turns around to face him. As he hands her his cravat, above them in the nursery the sounds of skipping, jumping feet, too excited to keep still, make them both pause, meet each others eyes, and exchange a smile. He bends his head down and she drapes the silk around his neck, tying it deftly into an elegant knot perfected through years of practice. He reaches into his waistcoat pocket for the pin - a subtle, gold affair - and she fastens the tie in place.

"There," she says at last, after some final straightening of his collar and smoothing back of a wayward lock of hair. "At least you will not offend our guests." He smiles, reaches out to stroke for a moment the pearls lying against her collarbone. He bends and kisses her gently.

"Merry Christmas, Mrs. Rochester."

"Merry Christmas, Darling."

He offers his arm. She takes it. They quit the room and go downstairs together.


End file.
